When he followed the instructions, the screen on the notebook lit up to display a website. “What?” her father said, seeing a picture of the outside of Razzle Dazzle Décor. Continuing to follow the instructions, he scrolled through a mock website of the store. A replica of the store, the decorations they sold, even the old cash register appeared onscreen, and when he saw the old NCR antique, he tapped the screen, and the cha-ching sound the register made when the drawer opened was exactly the same as the sound made by the register at the store.

“Lauren, look at this,” he said. “Is this for real?”

She scanned through the website as though she’d never laid eyes on it. He didn’t need to know that she was the prime mover behind making sure the website looked exactly like the store.

Lauren touched the screen a few times, acting as though she were as surprised as he was. “This is identical to the store.” She winked at her mother, who’d been helping out on the sidelines and was watching her husband and daughter, delighted with what she was seeing. Ilene had been a big supporter when Mr. G had approached Lauren with this idea for propelling her father into the twenty-first century, but her father would never learn of that. It was their secret.

“It’s a website. Looks like Mr. G wants you to work with him and Global Goods.” Lauren and her mother knew that in order for this endeavor to be successful, it had to appear as though it was entirely Mr. G’s idea. Her dad liked and respected him and wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the fact that he was the richest man in the United States, possibly the world.

Fortunately, Razzle Dazzle had made it through the season; it actually made a tiny profit, helped enormously by John’s purchase of the music boxes. But a tiny profit was not enough to keep the doors open. Without the money she’d had Roger transfer to the business account, the store would have had to close for good.

Once the holidays were over, they had been lucky, on any given day, to have a single customer come in, let alone make a sale. It was at that time that she and her mother gave Mr. G the go-ahead to approach her father as though he wanted to make a business deal.

“I think we need to do this, Ilene. G says it’s time to look at this online stuff.”

Lauren almost cried when she heard her father agree to Mr. G’s proposal.

Once the website was up and running, preorders started coming in faster than their artisans could fill them. They hired dozens more, but her father insisted they had to be from the state of North Carolina. Lauren agreed, and sales continued to skyrocket.